Deconstructing exercise

[Aeschines]

@beowulff

Do you do wide-grip?
My partner has me focused on wide-grip pull-ups, so that I can master the Muscle-up. I can do a few with 10 lbs strapped on. He’s a beast - he can do them with 90 lbs!

I mainly do close-grip since that gives you the greatest range of extension (you are hanging straight down from your arms instead of in a Y).

The muscle-up is perhaps the perfect example of “doing an exercise means means getting better at that exercise.” Yes, it requires strength, a lot of it, but it really is a skill-based movement at heart. It won’t make you stronger than doing the component parts (the pull-up and push-up-like movement). But that’s not to dis what you are doing. It looks cool and is a good exercise for you if it’s a good exercise for you (i.e., there’s neither nothing magical nor harmful about it).

Trying to do a muscle-up is actually what destroyed my other biceps for a few months. I think that was the right. What did in the left was simple wide-grip pull-ups. OTOH, I’ve never had any kind of pain or issue from doing the chin-up or neutral grip.

[Ambivalid]

@Aeschines

Well yeah, those are from a dead hang to the chinup bar against my breast bone. No cheatsie-weatsies on those…

I can do and do do neutral-grip pull-ups as well, with the palms facing each other. I can do about as many of those as the chin-ups.

Sure, they’re “easier” in some sense because the true “pull-up” takes the bis out of the equation more. But that doesn’t mean that pull-ups are better because they are harder. They were bad for my body, so I don’t do them.

Pullups (wide grip especially) are a better choice for lat development than chin ups. I consider chins more of an arm exercise than a back exercise.

[Aeschines]

You said lots of good stuff, and we largely agree. A few further points of dis/agreement:

@Blaster_Master

I personally know people that are competitive body builders and, frankly, most people don’t find that type of physique all that appealing, yet a lot of people still seem to have that as a training goal. Speaking for myself, I’m very happy with my physique, but I still get weird comments from those same competitive body builders when it comes up that I DON’T want to get any bigger or get any leaner.

Yeah, I reached a point this year where I thought, “Hey, I’m big enough. Stay the course, and if I get a bit bigger, fine, but I’m actually where I want to be in terms of size.” I want to get my weight down from around 197 to 185, which would put me at 15% body fat, which seems reasonable. And I will actually look a bit shredded at that point without it being crazy. But it’s hard to do…

Again, this comes back to goals. If you’re actually doing activities that require intense cardio, it’s important to train for it. Personally, I like a certain amount of intense cardio from time to time, but my everyday life doesn’t need me to be able to run 5 miles in 30 minutes, so I don’t train like that anymore. However, I can do everything I do most days (outside the gym) without losing my breath, and when called upon, can do more intense things like carry heavy objects up flights of stairs or run/walk a few miles.

Yes, this an eminently reasonable way of putting it.

I’ve met a couple people like that that I believe them when they say they aren’t using any drugs, but even still, they often are using lots of supplements and fat burners and are on ridiculously strict diets.

And some dudes are approaching at it from the opposite direction: they are naturally skinny with a six pack but struggling mightily to gain and keep any muscle mass.

I think people also have to understand how they carry their fat and what that implies for how they can look. No matter how much weight I ever lost, I never had a six pack. OTOH, no matter how fat I got, I never had a gut: instead, I tends to have “seal fat” around my entire torso. My face will look unhealthily thin before I lose enough of the fat to have that. It is what it is, so a six pack isn’t one of my goals.

Also, a woman trying to get a six pack is insane! That requires a near-impossible low level of body fat, and I think most guys (and chicks who dig femme chicks) would find it mannish and unattractive.

Still, looking like that ISN’T healthy. For instance, most of us are probably aware of how, say, Hugh Jackman looks as Wolverine, Henry Cavil as Superman, Ben Affleck as Batman, Chris Evans as Captain America, etc. What you DON’T hear is that they deliberately limit their shirtless physique shots often to the minimum, it takes weeks of preparation for it, and they’re often starving, seriously dehydrated, and often suffering from severe headaches, cramps, nose bleeds, and other fairly serious issues during that time.

Totally! Gerard Butler said that preparing for 300 was hell, and he’ll never do anything like that again. And then those gains and fat loss (whether they were totally natural or not) are ephemeral: I saw recent photos of Gerard in swimwear, and he’s got the regular dad bod with some pudge. But that’s what men really look like!

In fact, I recall reading an interview with Hugh Jackman about The Wolverine where he was as jacked as he’d been for any film, but during those particular scenes, he was so dehydrated that it was giving him migraines and he had trouble even seeing or focusing for the scenes and he’d have to take breaks laying in the dark just to keep going.

Yeah, that shit is totally insane. And what you see in the movie, the extreme action and apparent vitality, is the exact opposite of what’s going on IRL!

In short, absolutely these idealized male bodybuilder/superhero physiques are every bit as unrealistic and unhealthy as the hollywood/supermodel women’s physiques are.

Absolutely. I would say that men had it easier for a long time but have now caught up and deal with actually worse stuff than women do. That’s not to say that psychological effect on men is worse than on women, but the actual images we see are even less realistic, since they require us to be huge and ripped and not just thin. BUT, now women are being presented with images of jacked women as well, which is even more unrealistic than images of jacked men, and on and on it goes.

Yes, and this is a myth that really irritates me, that women lifting weights will make them bulky and “mannish”. Sure, to a certain extent that’s achieveable if one actually desires it and trains for it, but as a general rule, women won’t get bulky and will have a lower strength peak than men.

Yeah, the worst that’s going to happen is they will get some quality triceps and quads, which look good on a woman and don’t look strange at all. Many, many women could benefit from resistance training.

I ABSOLUTELY disagree here. Squats are an essential exercise precisely because it’s a natural complex movement that applies to almost everything one does. There’s a reason that squats/deadlifts/benchpress are the 3 powerlifting lifts, and they’re a core part of training for olympic lifts too, since it directly strengthens all those lifts.

I could have certainly been clearer in the OP. I am not against squatting. I am against the squat worship and mythologizing that goes on, and the lack of recognition of the exercise’s limits and the ability to replace free weight squatting with stuff that is really close. It comes down to wanting to believe in a system, my first point: “Dude, you squat in 5x5’s like that and your test will just blow up and you’ll get HUGE!”

Here’s another detail about me that may be pertinent: I am genetically gifted with huge legs. I have bigger quads than most guys who lift a lot harder. I just can’t feel squats in my legs very much. The bottleneck is my lower back, and I am just not that motivated to exercise my lower back via squats when I am doing deadlifts. Plus, I have the cardiovascular thing I mentioned: it messes with my blood pressure in some way that makes me feel odd and uncomfortable.

But let’s say I am setting up a workout for a noob, I would totally start the person out on bodyweight squats, then have them start using kettlebells or dumbells, and go from there. It is an amazing movement until you get pretty good at it, at which point you’ll probably hit the lower back bottleneck, and you’ll have to decide what to do next.

First, it’s only really uncomfortable and dangerous if you’re doing improper technique or doing too much weight. Similarly, it doesn’t require a spotter unless you’re going heavy (which isn’t necessary) and you don’t know how to fail properly.

Yeah, but that’s a pretty substantial set of conditions. Great post on the matter:

https://criticalmas.com/2012/06/i-no-longer-give-a-squat-about-the-squat/

He says, Where have all the old squatters gone? Those 30 year old guys who were squatting double their body weight 10 or 15 years ago are gone. They’ve been replaced with another generation of young lifters. People do not voluntarily en mass quit activities that they demonstrate excellence in performing. No matter how busy life gets, someone who has worked up to a double bodyweight squat doesn’t just walk away from the iron game without a reason. I believe that reason is pain and injuries. They’ve been removed from the pool so we don’t see those failures.

And that for me is the thing: You eventually are able to lift enough weight that exercise is dangerous. But if you are just starting out, front-squatting with a 25 lb. kettlebell could do amazing things for you.

Even major paleo guru Mark of www.marksdailyapple.com, who was a real triathlete, says he uses a squat machine for squatting. I do get the aesthetic appeal of barbell squatting, but I think the hack squat machine is a decent substitute.

You’re really doing yourself a disservice by avoiding complex movements like squats and presses, particularly in the context you mentioned above of how doing an exercise makes one good at that exercise. Getting muscles working together in complex movements gives those exercises greater range of application.

I said I do weighted pushups, which is even more core. I also do weighted dips.

Everyone should have SOME sort of resistance work in their exercise regimen, the amount depends on their goals.

Yes, and even a couch potato could see a huge difference without even that much effort. Pushups, kettlebell squats, kettlebell rows, a couple other things with a bare minimum of equipment and time would be transformative for a lot of people.